


This Is Why

by quiet__tiger



Category: Batman (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Gen, Gun Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 04:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10711749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiet__tiger/pseuds/quiet__tiger
Summary: A serious answer is given to a question always asked in jest.





	This Is Why

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Why So Serious?"
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal 3rd-Jul-2008.

Dick cradled Tim in his arms, trying to decide if anything else was hurt, broken.

Bleeding.

Bleeding like his face was, from the cut in front of his ear.

Bleeding like his chest was, front and back, from the armor-piercing round that had just gone through it. The hole was off-center, so it was probably just his lung, but there was still so much blood...

A tentative voice behind him asked, “Nightwing, is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know, Superboy.” He whipped around to glare at Kon, _the clone_. He hissed, “You can’t tell me that you didn’t see or hear that extra thug. He was right next to you.”

“I didn’t, I was just talking to Kid Flash--”

Dick whirled the other direction to glare at Kid Flash, _Impulse_. He was vibrating with what had better be worry. “And where the hell were you to stop him from jumping Robin?” 

“SuperboyandIwerejust--” 

Tim twitched and Dick looked down, trying to determine if Tim was trying to tell him something, or if his body was just fighting the wound.

He was just fighting.

Most important fight of his life.

Dick wasn’t sure if he should move Tim or not, and finally decided that it wasn’t a spinal injury, so it would be safe for Kon to fly him to the nearest hospital.

He gave the order and Kon reached out quickly but carefully, holding Tim as if he might break.

Hopefully he wouldn’t.

~*~

Dick paced up and down the waiting room, his eyes darting from the floor to Kon to Bart to the wall to the clock to the nurses’ desk and back around again.

He was angry. He had wanted to spend the weekend with his little brother, fight a little crime in San Francisco with Tim and his friends. But then they’d run into a large gang of dealers, pimps, Dick wasn’t even sure. Whatever they were doing, it was illegal.

Everyone had lost track of how many there were as more creeps poured into the alley. When the last hoodlum was down, while Kon and Bart were celebrating their supposed victory, while Dick was across the alley trying to get information from a beaten bad guy, Tim had been securing zip strips on one thug when another, hidden in the shadows, attacked him, hitting him with his gun and then shooting him.

The thug now had a broken jaw, two broken wrists, and severely damaged genitals.

He was lucky.

Lucky Tim was only in surgery. Otherwise Dick would find the thug in jail tonight and do even worse.

Kon and Bart sat in the hard chairs in the waiting room, Kon sitting there looking nervous and upset, Bart with his fingers drumming so rapidly on the armrests that his hands were a blur.

Kon caught Dick’s eyes and looked away quickly, and chewed on his lip.

Dick stalked up to them, glad for right now that the rest of Tim’s team wasn’t here. It had been a slow weekend.

Until all of a sudden it wasn’t.

He glared back and forth from Kon to Bart. Bart kept looking back and forth from Dick to a space past his arm, eyes moving so fast that it looked like he was speed reading. Kon wouldn’t look at him at all.

He still had Tim’s blood on his shirt.

Dick crossed his arms. “This is why.”

Kon looked over at him finally, and Bart locked his shifty gaze on him. Kon asked uncertainly, “Why what?”

“Why Batman is the way he is. Why we are the way we are.” He held Kon’s eyes, then Bart’s. “Why we’re so goddamn serious all the time. Why we have standards for everything, why we practice, why we train, why we’re so careful, so thorough, so neurotic.” He stepped back so he could look at both of them at the same time. “When we don’t take things seriously, people get hurt.” He looked towards the nurse’s desk. “People die.”

He turned back, and Bart carefully said, “We didn’t mean—We just—It’s never--”

Kon broke in to offer, “We thought everything was okay.” He leaned over and held his head in his hands. “We tease him because we’re just not used to having mentors who care about us that way, we’ve never been trained like that, it’s so weird to look at it all, how grave he is all the time...”

All three of them winced at Kon’s unfortunate choice of words.

Dick waited for one of them to once again ask the unknowable. If Tim would be okay.

He didn’t know.

But for everyone’s sake, he hoped so.

He exhaled heavily and finally sat down, completely exhausted.

~*~

After a while, how long he didn’t know, his sense of time was shot to hell, the doctor came down the hall to give them an update on Tim.

Dick sat up straighter, and felt Bart and Kon do the same.

He’d never known either boy to be so still or so quiet.

So serious.


End file.
